Atlanta Jewish Times Column Secures Secret Service Interest

The Secret Service would like to talk to you about your work

Since Gawker came callingAtlanta Jewish Times owner and publisher Andrew Adler’s no-good very bad week has only gotten worse. Now the Secret Service is interested in his writing. Adler published an incendiary column on January 13 in which he suggested options Israel could pursue to combat an increasingly aggressive Iran. Unfortunately, this was one of his suggestions:

Give the go-ahead for U.S. based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current vice president to take his place and forcefully dictate that the United States’ policy includes its helping the Jewish state obliterate its enemies.

Whoops. Adler apparently wasn’t aware that the U.S. Secret Service tends to frown on anyone suggesting such an option in a public forum, even as a thought experiment. And it didn’t take long for the Secret Service to develop an interest in Adler’s rhetoric. Spokesman George Ogilvie told CNN that they “are taking the appropriate investigative steps.”

The Secret Service investigation comes on top of everyone else’s reactions to Adler’s column. A quick sampling of the outrage:

ADL Director Abe Foxman: Adler showed “lack of judgment as a publisher, editor and columnist” and may not be “fit to run a newspaper.”

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, an associate dean at the Simon Wiesenthal Center: Adler’s words should be “condemned by Jewish leaders across the ideological and political spectrum.”

Chemi Shalev, writing for Haaretz.com: Andrew Adler “has stained American Jews by appearing to supposedly represent their twisted way of thinking.”

Adler, for his part, seemed gobsmacked by responses to his column and issued an apology, saying “I very much regret it, I wish I hadn’t made reference to it at all.”